How to get started with ESRS reporting

In the ESRS module on Daato, you can perform the double materiality analysis, complete a gap analysis and then collect and report ESRS data. 

This article is about how to get through the data collection and prepare your sustainability report e.g. after completing your Double Materiality assessment, as describe here.

Before you get started with the ESRS data collection and reporting, take another look at the relevant roles in the ESRS module here.

Launchpad

In the ESRS module, we will once again guide you through the various steps to achieve your audit-ready CSRD sustainability report with the help of our launchpad. In the rest of this article, we will introduce you to the various steps. Here you can also see how the ESRS module is structured on Daato:

On Daato, all disclosure requirements and data points are automatically activated or deactived based on the results of the materiality analysis in order to meet the requirements of the ESRS. The selection of disclosure requirements is made automatically as soon as the DMA is linked to the newly created ESRS report. 

Nevertheless, this first step is relevant even if you have carried out the materiality analysis with Daato and benefit from the automatic transfer because you can also

• Add company-specific information
• Apply phase-in provisions or determine for which disclosure requirements you may not have information and exclude them
• Assign certain standards or disclosure requirements to colleagues and thus assign responsibility

If you have not done your Double Materiality Assessment with Daato, you can use this step to reflect its results on the tool by using the Activate / Deactivate toggles to include or exclude standards, disclosure requirements or even data points from the report. 

As soon as you start this step, you will see all the standards (e.g. E1, S1, G1, etc.), all disclosure requirements (e.g. BP-1, E1-1, etc.) and data points distributed into the four groups General Disclosures, Environmental, Social and Governance. We at Daato have transferred all ESRS data points to our software and now offer you various options for completing them. The completeness of the data points on Daato's software has been confirmed by the auditor Rödl & Partner.

You can see how it all works here:

Once you have completed your work in this first step, you can close the step and start the next step. You can reopen the step at any time, but you should bear in mind that if you make changes to the (de)activation of the disclosure requirements at a later date, you may lose data for disclosure requirements that you later exclude.

Step 2: Preparation of the data collection

Once you have confirmed the scope of your report, you are ready to prepare the data collection. As soon as you start this step, you will see all the standards (e.g. E1, S1, G1, etc.), all disclosure requirements (e.g. BP-1, E1-1, etc.) and data points that you chose to include in the report in Step 1 distributed into the four groups General Disclosures, Environmental, Social and Governance.  

In the second step, you now have the possibility to set up the data collection. You can now do the following things:

• Assign entire disclosure requirements to one of your colleagues
  
  
• Select a data point for "Manual" data collection
  
  
• Select a data point for "Aggregated" data collection

What do "Manual" and "Aggregated" data collection mean, you might ask yourself. 

"Manual" data collection means that you either (1) open a data point and just answer it yourself or send it to one colleague (2) use Daato's collaboration feature to collaborate with selected experts. 

1. Answering a data point by yourself or request answer from one colleague
   This can be appropriate when the data point is just a single "Yes / No"-question, for example, that affects the whole organisation. 
   The prime example is ESRS 2 "(BP-1 5 a) What is the basis for preparation of your sustainability statement? Has it been prepared on a consolidated or individual basis?", where the answer is either "Consolidated" or "Individual". This can be answered by one person, usually at group level, either yourself or you request it as shown here from a colleague.
   
   
2. Collaborate - Answering a data point together with selected experts
   For qualitative questions in particular, it may be necessary to collect input from several experts from the company, as they all have certain knowledge that, in its entirety, will then provide the answer to the respective data point. You can use the "Collaborate" feature on Daato for this purpose.
   The prime example is ESRS 2 "(GOV-5 36 a) Please describe the scope, main features and components of risk management and internal control processes and systems that your organisation applies in relation to sustainability reporting". Here it can be relevant to request inputs from 2 or 3 colleagues from the risk management team who have different types of expertise, and all of them can provide bits and pieces of the answer to you, and you can then summarize it to one "final" answer.

"Aggregated" data collection means that this data point will be sent to a larger group of e.g. entities (all subsidiaries, all locations) at once with all other data points that are selected for "aggregated" data collection. This means the receiver receives one request with all the data points selected for aggregated data collection and assigned to him. The prime example is ESRS 3-4 "(E3-4 28 a) Water consumption", which is best sent to all entities, locations, etc. and then aggregated to one sum based on all inputs.

The aggregation draws on the organisational structure and the users assigned to it. It enables data collection from various units at once, with one click, and aggregates the responses automatically.

Once you have gone through all standards, disclosure requirements and data points and chosen the data collection method, click on "Complete step" and you can move on to Step 3, where you can actually enter and collect the data.

Step 3: Data collection

As soon as you have completed the preparatory process in Step 2 and set everything up, you can start the data collection by setting a due date and drafting a message to all receivers. Then you can actually launch the data collection and requests (via email notifications) are sent directly to everyone that you assigned to the entities that you are collecting data from, who then respond to them. You will receive a notification as soon as the feedback has been submitted.

In this video, you can see how the entire process works:

Throughout the process, it is important that you or your colleagues mark the data points as completed as soon as you have answered them so that you can view your progress at any time. You can also use our filter function in the table to quickly see which data points have not yet been answered, for example.

Step 4: Reporting

Once all data points have been marked as "Completed", you can finalise Step 2: Data collection and start creating the report. You can also start this step even if you have not yet completed all the data points. 

You will now see a table with all the disclosure requirements for which you can now create your respective report paragraphs. To do this, you can use the help next to the window for the report paragraph to consult the data collected in the previous step, take another look at the disclosure requirement, view a checklist provided by Daato or use our guidance to help you. You can also upload documents for audit purposes.

In addition to the option of writing the report paragraphs yourself, on Daato you also have the option of being supported by our artificial intelligence. This is how it works:

Once you have created all the report paragraphs, you can download the report in Word format by clicking on the "Export report" button. The document not only contains the report paragraphs you have created, but also the data points and tables to be included in the report in accordance with ESRS.

Daato is now also working on a functionality for iXBRL reporting. Please contact our support team for more information.